Best Historic Places in Highland, Scotland - Map and Reviews

Ackergill Tower (also known as Ackergill Castle) is located in Wick, Caithness. The castle was originally a five storey tower house. It has now been converted to a luxury hotel and business venue. There are 25 bedrooms, with 17 in the Castle, the rest in the Keepers, Old Laundry, Garden House and Smiddy. The castle was originally built in the 15th century by clan Keith. In 1547, the Sinclairs of Sinclair & Girnigoe Castle attacked and captured the castle. Mary the Regent (wife of James V) returned Ackergill Tower to the Keiths, and appointed Lord Oliphant as keeper of Ackergill. The Sinclairs again captured the castle in 1556. Ackergill was recaptured by the Keiths in the late 1590s. The Sinclairs bought the castle in 1612 before surrendering it to Sir Robert Gordon in 1623. Oliver Cromwell may have used Ackergill Castle in 1651 as a barracks. Ackergill was bought by Sir William Dunbar in 1699. The Dunbars extensively renovated the castle began extensive renovations, including an extension to the tower. It remained in the Dunbars family until 1986, when it was sold and converted to a hotel and business venue.

Ruthven Barracks near Kingussie in the Cairngorm area of the Highlands are the most impressive and most atmospheric surviving example of the military barracks built by the British government in the Scottish Highlands following the Jacobite Rising of 1715, a substantial stone fortification on an ancient motte that stands in dramatic isolation in the Spey Valley and whose gaunt and roofless state makes it one of the most evocative military ruins in Scotland. Historic Environment Scotland manages the barracks, which are freely accessible to visitors. The barracks were built between 1719 and 1721 on the site of a castle associated with the Lords of Badenoch, the great medieval landholders of this area, to house a garrison of government troops whose purpose was to overawe the Highland population and prevent the movement of arms and men through the Spey valley, a key route through the Highland interior. The building withstood an attack by Jacobite forces during the 1745 Rising but was captured and destroyed by the retreating Jacobite army in February 1746, two months before the final defeat at Culloden. The final act at Ruthven Barracks was one of the most poignant moments of the Jacobite cause. Several thousand Highland soldiers assembled here after Culloden in the hope that Bonnie Prince Charlie would continue the struggle, the embers of the Rising still burning in the days immediately after the defeat. The message they received from the Prince, advising each man to seek his own safety as best he could, effectively ended the '45 and the soldiers dispersed across the Highlands to whatever fate awaited them. The setting of the barracks on their motte in the wide Spey Valley, with the Cairngorm mountains visible to the east and the Monadhliath to the west, is one of the finest Highland landscape settings of any historic monument.